Coburn Calls Out White House Over Non-Essential Sequester Hires

The federal government is posting new hiring notices for superfluous positions such as historians, librarians, painters, and recreation aids, even as the White House complains about the impact of automatic spending cuts, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn has charged.

“While the Air Force may need leadership for its museums and history programs, and the USDA may need to keep its literature in order, those needs should take a back seat to the dire threat to public health and safety that some have claimed will result from sequestration,” he wrote in a letter to the White House budget office Tuesday, Politico reports.

The letter said that on March 4, two days after the sequester began, 606 new federal jobs were listed on usajobs.com. “While some of these positions may be essential to the mission of the agency, others are not.”

The job openings include a “social media management service to streamline management of multiple social media platforms” at the Food and Drug Administration, an Agriculture Department librarian, and a director of history and museums policies and programs at the Air Force, with a salary between $143,600 and $165,300.

“Freezing hiring of non-essential positions and solicitations for unnecessary services, such as the FDA social media contract, would save resources that could be applied to prevent furloughs for mission-critical employees,” Coburn wrote.

The federal government is posting new hiring notices for superfluous positions such as historians, librarians, painters, and recreation aids, even as the White House complains about the impact of automatic spending cuts, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn has charged.